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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26654218">i used to scream ferociously</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/heathermcnamara/pseuds/heathermcnamara'>heathermcnamara</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Call the Midwife</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/F, also this is a reach ur honour, tw for brief and vague mentions of abuse &amp; alcoholism, yes .... this is em's folklore is about call the midwife hours, yes it's 2nd person lmao i h8 myself</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 10:33:59</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,339</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26654218</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/heathermcnamara/pseuds/heathermcnamara</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>it became a running joke, trixie who lives with the ghosts, trixie who lives with the mad father, trixie who lives with the half absent mother, trixie who lives with the unshakeable feeling that she isn't worth anything because the people who are meant to love her most in the world don't quite love her enough</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>i used to scream ferociously</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>what if we were two traumatised girls growing up during the war ... and we impacted each other in profound ways that last long after we last speak ... and we were both girls ...</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>You think, sometimes, when the silence is too much, that ghosts might live in you. That’s the only way you can seem to explain it - sometimes the idea of being haunted by your past feels a little too real. And there are so many of them, that at night when they swirl round your head, you almost can’t see for the shadows. You can outrun your feelings, outdrink your past (and god knows you tried to do that), but you can never forget - and sometimes memory curls its cruel fist and hits you hard, a steely knock to the gut that has you winded, begging for air. You haven’t been haunted by this ghost for a long time, not in several years maybe, but tonight, something has drawn you to the memories, memories that you laid down carelessly in the back of your mind, allowed to gather dust, allowed to forget.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>You first met her at seven, or thereabouts - so much of your own childhood is blurred, it’s hard to connect the dots, mismatched constellations of events, dates, people that don’t quite seem to fit together in the right way (you were one of those stars once too, but you burned out, crashed to earth, and now you’re here, just skin and bone, flesh and blood, but maybe all the better for it) - on one of those days where the wind seems to bite at you like a hungry little dog, snapping for any stray morsel it can get, and the smell of fallen leaves lingers long after they’re cleared, hanging onto your clothes, echoing into the days and weeks after. She was running around, not a care in the world, as loud as any of the boys could be, laughter spilling over.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>You might not have ever spoken to her, might have dismissed her as just another one of the many other children, had she not been the one to speak to you first. She had come right over and told you, in that blunt childish manner that you recognise now in so many of the children you see, that she liked your jumper, and you, ever so prideful of your appearance, even then, fixed her your biggest, brightest smile and that was that - you were friends.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It was so simple back then, pinky fingers linked in an endless promise, two girls huddled in a makeshift cave of their own creation, blonde hair intertwining with brunette, footsteps echoing on the pavement in unison, running half wild with the fear of home pumping your feet as far as they would go (and you never strayed all too far in the end, did you? It feels a million miles away sometimes, and you yourself are million miles from who you were, but it’s hardly the far flung paradise you dreamed of as a little girl).</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It’s strange how you never notice things change as it’s happening - only when it is far too late to ever go back. Seven years old and drawing chalk patterns on the pavement turns into thirteen years old and drawing hearts in your schoolbooks and somehow, you never felt it happen. Balancing on broken walls as you watched her seem to defy the very laws of gravity. You were too scared to make the jump like the other kids (always a stickler for self preservation), content enough with the view of everything - and you remember so distinctly how it felt to see it all from above, perched atop the low slope of the school roof like a flock of birds, all of you together and careless and free -</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Well, not careless. Never careless enough. It was a break, at least, for you. The minute you got home, the show was over. You never spoke about it then, would never dream of doing so, you barely speak about it now (and you wonder how much of it is just the way you were raised, or if it’s your own shame that creeps in and silently chokes you) and you would swear up and down that you’ve managed to block more than half of it out, but some parts of it will never leave you. You really do never forget what it’s like to be putting on a show, desperately smiling, desperately pleading, desperately holding it all in.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>You wonder if there are still beautiful things - but there she is, pulling you back out of the darkness of your house, even in dreams, even in another life, and it is enough.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Summer was always a respite, a beautiful breath of fresh air. You would visit your godmother, and she would make you tea and cake and you would bring her with you (and both of you would vow even then, to have these days as nice in your life forever). She pretended as much as you did that everything was fine. You were the better actress of the two, always were (oh, you had big dreams, didn’t you?) but you knew and she knew and you both lied and lied and lied. The attic there was full of secrets, but never the dangerous kind, never the kind that left the air full of threats, that left lungs filled with tears, that left girls hiding in the wardrobe.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It seems as if now, you will end up taking these to the grave with you.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>You wish you could remember more than you do. Two decades, give or take, have passed since you first met, and you hasten to forget your childhood as much as you possibly can. You wonder sometimes though, what really did happen to her? She would be your age now, and it’s almost impossible to picture the little girl with the long braids, or even the newly teenage girl with the permanently cheeky grin, as a grown adult. It took a long time for you to even see yourself as a real adult- you raced through your days, wishing to be in your twenties, and then spent those same years half determined to drink yourself into an early grave. And maybe if not for your friends (your brave, wonderful, kind, loving friends, who you still barely believe that you deserve), you might be in that same grave right now. And now you’re fully formed, and this is you- this is your life, this is who you are. And maybe now you’re finally at peace with it. You like your work (always have done, no matter how much you complain about it), you like your friends (adore them in fact, all the way to the moon, to saturn), and you think you like yourself more than you have in a long time (it’s so hard to say, and it’s hard to be proud of yourself, but it’s true). You do think, from time to time, would she be proud of you?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>All this talk of haunting, has you thinking of how she would tell you ghost stories, and the two of you would scare each other silly, especially in the winter when it got dark early, chasing each other home, the adrenaline sending you flying. And you remember when she came back to your house (oh you were never allowed friends round, your mother near forbade it, but she was still at your doorstep one rare night when your father opened the door), and you thought you might die from whatever it was that was howling in your stomach (maybe its own ghost - embarrassment, fear, shame, all burning until your cheeks turned red and you near lost the ability to speak).</p>
<p> </p>
<p>She told you the next day that your house was haunted (and maybe, she said, maybe - that’s why your dad is always mad).</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It became a running joke, Trixie who lives with the ghosts, Trixie who lives with the mad father, Trixie who lives with the half absent mother, Trixie who lives with the unshakeable feeling that she isn’t worth anything because the people who are meant to love her most in the world don’t quite love her enough.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>(maybe the last part was never said aloud, but you felt it)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It wasn’t funny. It just wasn’t.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>You asked her to run away with you once, steal away onto one of the boats that moored in the docks, and she said you could become pirates, but the docks don’t take pirates, just rowdy men who laughed at you then and leer at you now.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>At least then you wouldn’t have to cry. And she wouldn’t have to hide.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Oh, your sharp tongue and telling people where she really got those bruises. She never truly forgave you after that, did she?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>(and you never quite forgave yourself either, did you?)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>You half fell apart, as friendships of that age often do - six years was a good long run as any. She moved on, finding a new girl to enthrall with her stories, to tell her secrets, and you - you moved up, deciding it was time to be done with being childish, with games of hiding, with tales of hauntings. No more ghosts, and no more secrets.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The last time you saw her, really saw her, not caught half a glimpse of her in the street, not thought you saw her double in a crowd, not blinked and saw what could have been the ghost of her shift in the corner of your eye, was when she had already packed her suitcase. And it still makes you ache just to think of it, a little girl, years older than she had been when you first met, a teenager now, but still half formed, still a little girl looking back, sat on a suitcase all alone. You don’t remember as much about that day now - something fogs it over, clouds it with uncertainty, but you don’t think you’ll ever forget the drop your heart took when you realised who she was.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>She had tears in her eyes when you ran after her, and you could hardly see for your own, oh you both knew what was coming. It hung in the air, the threat of never hearing from her again, never seeing her roll her eyes, never getting a sharp elbow to the ribs, never getting a hastily scrawled note (and you had kept every single one, had them pressed into the back page of one of your old diaries right up until the day you left home for good, never looking back).</p>
<p> </p>
<p>You could never remember who kissed who, and you suppose it doesn’t matter now - it was a childish kiss, an almost bashful pressing of lips, but a kiss all the same - it barely lasted, the taste of saltwater tears fresh on your mouth, fresh in your heart, flooding it until you felt as if you could drown.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>You grabbed her hand as the bus came and you somehow thought you’d never let go. You have a vague idea that you tried to pull her back, a hazy memory of an outstretched arm as the doors closed in your face, locking you out forever, leaving you alone on the pavement in the dust, with that same dead scent lingering in the air.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Sent away, the whispers told you later, and nobody would tell you any more. The mutters about how it’s such a shame, such a nice family, such a shame, make your ears burn and fill you with the sort of rage you’d never felt before (the same you later learn to feel and learn to express with more eloquence than you had allowed in your youth). They didn’t know her, and they certainly didn’t know her family as well as they pretended to (or they did, and they lied, lied, lied as much as she had done). Your mother, in one of your rare conversations with her, admits in a murmur that she’s glad you two hadn’t spoken in some time, and that she would have influenced you - whatever that was supposed to mean. You do know what they mean though, what they mean with what they don’t say, you always knew, and you learn to keep quiet, to silence that part of yourself.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>You lay awake in the fear the first three nights, scared someone would break your door down, scared someone, anyone, is reading your mind, and after that, you decide you’re in the clear. You still wanted to be an actress back then, after all.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It became a running joke, Trixie who’s up for a good time, Trixie who can outdrink any of the boys, Trixie who lives with the ghosts, the ghosts in her head that won’t go away because half of them are her.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Your first kiss was a girl, and you don’t know what that means. Not for years and years. You know more now, know yourself enough, and if anyone ever had any doubts, you’ve kissed more than enough boys since (and you do love them, you do).</p>
<p> </p>
<p>You were not in love with her, you supposed, you were too young for that, but you had love for her and that was true enough - and you would still wish her nothing but the best if you could see her again.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>You wonder if she sees you in everyone the way you see her, and maybe always will. You see her in Patsy, in more ways than one, but mostly in her blunt way with words. You see her in Delia in her bravery. You see her in Valerie, in her mannerisms, her way of holding herself.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>And you see - saw - her in Barbara, in her nervous energy, her quiet courage, and - despite the years of difference - the way you grew together so closely.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It was the biggest secret that you kept, the biggest secret you learned to keep. Remnants of whispers in an attic from so long ago, become wilted ghosts that lull you to sleep even now.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>You haven’t been haunted by this ghost for a long time, but you hope she’s at peace, wherever she is.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>hello thank u for making it this far ily endlessly &lt;33<br/>this is literally purely just self indulgent bi trixie AND seven taylor swift inspired fic like ... oops<br/>also events do happen out of order like . i'm not super sure how clear it is rip !!<br/>also ... an ode to those very intense female friendships every other gay person i know has had ? lgbt struggle tweets this is for u</p></blockquote></div></div>
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